Crossing guards play a vitally important role in school safety. Crossing guards stand watch and control traffic at crosswalks to allow school children to cross safely from one side of the street to the other. Crossing guards alert traffic of the presence of a child or adult near a crosswalk or actually in a crosswalk, and then signal traffic to stop before the crosswalk. Guards are needed because children are small, difficult to see, and can be unpredictable in their movement around traffic.
Distracted driving is known to be a serious problem, not just on highways but on surface streets. Drivers who are drunk, sleepy, talking, or texting on a mobile phone give less than their full attention to the road, traffic in the road, and other conditions on the road. Such drivers often fail to see oncoming traffic, changing traffic signals, and pedestrian traffic in or near the roadway. As such, distracted drivers have become a scourge to road safety.
Distracted drivers are a danger to children walking in school crosswalks. Crossing guards have reported that the number of drivers who have failed to slow, or even failed to stop, in a school crosswalk, has increased in the past few years. Many believe this escalation has been the result of drivers talking or texting on mobile phones who fail to appreciate the changing conditions of the road. An improved method of alerting drivers, and distracted drivers especially, of nearby crosswalks is needed.